


Professional Concern

by Euphorion



Category: Campaign (Podcast), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Kidnapping, Kinda, M/M, Mutual Pining, Violence, slight bdsm vibes, unnecessarily complicated plots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 12:16:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13387626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion
Summary: Zero activated his comm. “Sy.”There was a pause, and then Synox’s clipped voice said, “go ahead, Agent Zero.”“Listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once.” He hadn’t caught any bugs in the room, nor did he think it likely his personal connect with Synox could be sliced—he could almost hear Blue scoff at the possibility—but if there was one thing he’d learned in his years on the job it was that paranoia paid. “Blue’s been kidnapped.”





	Professional Concern

**Author's Note:**

> written for the ospn kinkmeme, for the "Blue gets kidnapped" prompt:
> 
> _He's an important Minister dude and he has a bodyguard for a reason. You could totally swing Blue getting kidnapped! And I want for Zero to be wracked with guilt for letting him get taken, to be worried sick about him, and determined as heck to find and save him. Aava and/or Synox may be involved in the fic as well, but I really want some Zeblue here! Already dating Zeblue, already pining Zeblue, only-just-now-realizing-that-he-loves-him Zeblue, whatever! Bonus points for a kiss or more (wink wonk) when they're reunited._
> 
> It, uh, got a little out of hand.

Zero breezed past the man at the hotel desk, ignoring his tiny nod. One of the rank and file bodyguards Blue had insisted would be fine. He made a mental note to have a word with him on the way out. Just because he _was_ Agent Zero didn’t mean he couldn’t be someone _pretending_ to be Agent Zero, and no matter how convenient it was he absolutely should not have been able to pass without being challenged, or at least tailed. He swiveled his vision behind him and swapped to read heat signatures. The dude hadn’t even _moved._ Disgraceful.

The plain-clothes guys on Blue’s hotel room door were better, moving to intercept him, but even they stepped back when he flashed his ID. “He in there?”

“Yes, sir,” said the one on the right. Tall, head kind of shaped like a fist. He hesitated. “I believe he’s still sleeping, sir.”

Zero snorted. “Blue. Sleeping.”

“He’s been very quiet all morning,” said the other, who might have been kind of pretty if he hadn’t chopped his hair to the hideous regulation almost-mullet.

“So he’s working,” Zero said, shrugging.

“But sir, he hasn’t even asked for caf.”

Zero paused in pushing his way through the door. Now that _was_ odd. There was no way Blue would have survived til noon without better caf than came out of the hotel machine.

“He was in bed when we checked on him an hour ago, sir,” said the pretty one. There was a hint of resentment in it, an implied _like we’ve been ordered to do._

Zero ignored him and finished pushing the door open.

Blue was in fact lying in bed. Weirder, he was wearing his dress uniform, and he looked - clean, and shaven, not that he could grow enough of a beard for anyone to be able to really tell. He looked like he’d been preparing for a public appearance and then decided to take a nap instead. It was the opposite of how Zero expected to find him after a week apart—he’d expected to have to bundle a sleep-deprived mess of a Minister back to the Bluebird without anyone seeing, not. This.

He looked around. Comfortingly, the rest of the room was in god-awful shape. Empty and half-empty cups of caf were strewn across the desk. His suitcase was half-unpacked, shirts he probably hadn’t worn strewn over the floor. A pile of data pads was stacked precariously in one corner, and one of Blue’s fancy typing gloves was actually hanging off his bedpost as if flung there in a fit of passion. Probably frustrated passion, knowing Blue, or self-satisfaction on some stupid new idea. The thought made him smile behind his mask.

He settled on the bed at his side, kind of reluctant to wake his employer. He looked weirdly peaceful like this, his hair a clean tangle of curls over his forehead, his eyelashes laying unfluttering against his freckled cheeks. “Blue,” he said at last, quietly. “Vacation’s over, we’re due back on the Bluebird in half an hour.”

Blue didn’t stir. Zero straightened, something pinging wrong in his peripherals, an unease rising in his chest. “Blue,” he said again, louder. The dude slept badly, and lightly. Zero’d seen him wake up from miniscule changes in the pitch of an engine-whine. He reached out to shake his shoulder. “Blue!”

His hand passed through Blue’s robes and into his shoulder, meeting nothing but empty air.

Zero spat a curse, raising his head immediately and flipping through his various modes, looking for the source of the hologram. He found it almost instantly - one of the ceiling tiles slightly propped up, the glint of a lens. He activated his rocket boots for a brief burst and had it in his hand in seconds. It was small enough to fit in his palm. It looked like a hyper-advanced version of the projectors that Astromechs were equipped with, capable of being activated remotely. He switched it off.

Blue’s sleeping form vanished. Zero stood, alone, in a hotel room that no longer looked comfortingly messy, but ransacked, his heart pounding in his ears. He clenched his jaw and scanned for biological material, checking for blood.

Tiny silver flares went off—saliva on the edges of caf cups, sweat on a few of the shirts spilling out of the now-obviously-searched suitcase—but nothing larger, and no blood.

The relief that flooded through him was so great he sagged with it, but as soon as it had washed over him the panic set in again. Not dead. Not dead but _gone._ “Think,” he muttered to himself. Who would have access to this tech and want Blue alive? Who would go through all this trouble to maintain the illusion that Blue was still here? When had this happened? “ _Think._ ”

He cased the room again, realizing what had pinged him as wrong—Blue’s actual dress uniform, hanging in the hotel closet, half-visible through the open door. He brushed his knuckles down the velvet of its sleeve. It helped, somehow, to touch what he hadn’t been able to.

He activated his comm. “Sy.”

There was a pause, and then Synox’s clipped voice said, “go ahead, Agent Zero.”

“Listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once.” He hadn’t caught any bugs in the room, nor did he think it likely his personal connect with Synox could be sliced—he could almost hear Blue scoff at the possibility—but if there was one thing he’d learned in his years on the job it was that paranoia paid. “Blue’s been kidnapped.” He was surprised how steadily it came out, despite the yawning pit in his stomach that opened when he had to put it into words.

Another pause, resonant with surprise. Zero immediately regretted calling before he had more information. The idea that Synox might ask him how, or where he thought Blue was, or if he was okay, or anything that Zero would have to answer with _I don’t know_ was suddenly unbearable. “He’s alive, as far as I know,” he continued, quickly, to preempt anything. “I’m taking a last look at the scene. Can you get Aava—”

“She’s here,” Synox interrupted, his voice almost reassuring. Maybe Zero hadn’t done such a good job of keeping the panic out of his voice after all. “Zero. I can send you a squad of backup—”

“No,” said Zero immediately. “No, the last thing we want is any hint of this getting out, and increased military presence at the hotel will just draw suspicion. We’ll just—we’ll just find him, yeah?” It was meant to be a plan, not a plea. He wasn’t sure how well he did on that one.

“Of course,” Synox said firmly.

“Thanks, Sy. I’ll rendezvous with the two of you in about an hour. Oh, and can you do me a favor?” He uploaded the images of the tiny projector to his link. “Can you find me anything you can on this tech? Who created it, who’s bought it, whatever you can.”

“Will do,” said Synox. “See you at 1300.”

Zero closed the link, twitching his shoulders straight and trying to feel like he was on more solid ground. The hologram had already been in place an hour ago, according to the useless kriffing idiots on Blue’s door. Blue had been quiet “all morning”, so it was possible the actual abduction had occurred the previous night. He crossed to the window, tapping on the transparisteel with his metal hand. It rang, whole and untouched, fit tight in its casing.

He activated his boots in a burst again, this time removing the loose ceiling tile entirely and sticking his head up into the ceiling. There wasn’t much space between the tiles and the floor above, but there was enough—enough for skilled infiltrators to extract a slight man, if he didn’t struggle. If they’d _done_ something to him so he wouldn’t struggle.

He dropped silently down out of the ceiling and walked back out of the hotel room. “You’re dismissed.”

The useless kriffing goons looked at him, surprised. The fist-faced one looked uncomfortable. “Sir, technically only Minister Blue—”

Zero slammed him into the wall, robotic hand at his throat, before he finished the syllable. The pretty one yelped and went for his sidearm, but he was too close. Without looking at him Zero swung out a heel, knocking the blaster out of his hands, and snapped the steel toe of his boot up into his chin for good measure. He recentered, lowering his leg, as the bodyguard collapsed, holding his jaw, gasping in pain. Zero tightened his fingers on the other one’s throat, making his mask as reflective black as possible so the mook was staring into his own terrified eyes. “The only reason you’re still _breathing_ right now,” he hissed, “is that I don’t want to have to clean up your _corpses,_ do you understand me?”

He felt the guy swallow against the sensors in his hand. “Y-yes sir,” he managed, his hands coming up, probably unconsciously, to scrabble ineffectually at Zero’s sleeve. “P-please—”

“I’m really not sure you do,” Zero said, tightening his fingers further, cutting off speech. “You kriffed up. You kriffed up so spectacularly that there is nothing in this _world_ that I would love more than pry open your stupid teeth, reach down your throat, and tear out your _spine._ ”

Probably they had only stunned Blue. If they’d taken the time to create the facsimile, if there was no blood. Probably they hadn’t hurt him.

He let go, watching the bodyguard slide down the wall, feeling nothing. “I repeat,” he said, glancing at the other one, who was struggling to his feet, his mouth bloody. “You’re dismissed. And if you breathe a word of this, well.” He cocked his head. “I might get over my aversion to cleaning up.”

The fist-faced one slid around him, nodding vigorously. “Yes sir,” he babbled, “I mean, no sir, we won’t—thank you, sir!” He helped his friend to his feet, and then they both stumbled away.

Zero watched them go, then turned on his heel, following the signs for the stairwell.

The doors leading from the hall to the stairs were code-locked, but the touchpad next to the door was dead, and the door opened when he pushed it. It took him only a second to find the ceiling panel that was slightly out of place. He worked his jaw. Up or down?

His memory of the hotel’s plans had a sub-basement with a few exits, all of them pretty public. He went up.

Like most high-end hotels, the roof had a landing pad for visitors too rich or conspicuous to use conventional entrances or be seen by a plebeian public. It also had a computer that logged every use of said pad. Zero doubted it hadn’t been sliced already, but he extracted the data just in case, pulling his data stick from the side of the little podium when he saw something else.

Near the edge of the roof, lying by itself as if casually forgotten, was Blue’s other glove.

Zero went to retrieve it, turning it over and over in his hands. He stayed crouched at the edge of the roof, staring out at the towering spires of Galactic City, and activated his comm. “Blue,” he said. “I don’t suppose you can hear me.”

Silence. Expected, but no easier to hear because of it. He felt himself draining away into it, attempting to fill it up. “Yeah, I. I thought not. Just in case though, buddy—I’m coming for you. I’ll see you soon. I promise.” He paused, curling his fingers, running his thumb over the knuckles of the glove, absent, furious. “Oh. And if the assholes who took Minister Blue are listening, well. You’ll see me soon too, and I’ve got a promise for you as well.” His lips curled back from his teeth in a snarl. “I’ll be the last thing you ever see. If you’ve hurt him—if you’ve even upset him—it might take you _days_ to die.”

The wind rose around him, as if helping carry his words to wherever they needed to go.

+

“It’s Blue’s own design.” It was the first thing Aava said to him when he got aboard. She and Synox were in the briefing room. They weren’t drinking caf—the caf machine wasn’t even on _—_ and Zero added that to a running tally of little subtle things about Blue being missing that just made his whole _life_ feel unfamiliar.

He unstrapped his sword from his side and settled in next to her to look at the display she pulled up. “The projector?”

Synox nodded. “Unreleased. Took us a while to find anything on it because it’s not on the holonet at all, just in the internal Bluebird files. Looks like a larger, more detailed version of the one he uses to make that cute little autopilot version of you.”

Zero nodded. “Definitely more detailed,” he said. “I was about two feet from the hologram of Blue and it fooled me. _Me._ ”

Synox and Aava exchanged a look.

“Wait,” said Zero. “You said unreleased, and there’s nothing on the holonet about this at all?”

“Yeah, that’s the weird part,” said Aava. “There’s nothing. The only information on it at _all,_ even on board, is the patent. Everything else must be in Blue’s personal files.”

“His tech,” Zero said slowly. “Never sold. But they must be being _manufactured,_ right? Maybe someone involved in the production—”

Synox nodded. “That’s possible,” he said. “But we have no way of knowing where or who is making the things.”

Zero frowned. “Show me that patent again?”

Aava obliged, and Zero leaned in. Something hadn’t been quite right. “The patent number,” he said. “The format makes no sense, it should be eight numerals, date issued, series number—this is way too long.”

Synox raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know you were familiar with patent law, Agent Zero.”

“I’m not,” Zero said, screencapping the number with his eye and uploading it to his server, running it through pattern recognition in serials in his files and what he could access of Blue’s. “I’ve just seen a lot of ‘em. Blue waves these things at me every time he gets a new one, like they’re awards or something.”

His visor blinked with match results—not exact, but the first four, in an holonet message from Blue from three years ago. Zero blinked. “It’s—a code.”

Aava frowned at him. “For a program?”

Zero shook his head. “Not that kind of code, _a_ code. A cipher, actually.” His robotic fingers twitched as he did the substitutions. “Blue and I made up a cipher system a few years ago in case we needed to pass messages in secret. I didn’t recognize it because it’s been ages since we used it for anything and we usually use letters, not numerals, except when we send—” he finished transliterating and dragged the new series of numbers onto Aava’s display. “Coordinates.”

Aava stared at them. “He’s telling us where he is.”

Zero stood up, moving to the pilot’s controls and immediately punching in the coordinates into the ship’s computer.

Synox followed him. “Hang on. This makes no sense. How would Minister Blue be able to hide a secret message about where he’s been kidnapped to in a patent for a product used in his kidnapping?”

“He sliced it,” Aava suggested.

Zero shook his head. “I found his gloves,” he said, still laying in their course. He remembered how insistent Blue had been that they take a vacation, that Zero get some time to himself, how insistent he’d been that he’d be _absolutely fine_ in the hands of the hired goons. “He set it up beforehand. He knew someone was going to try and kidnap him, and he let it happen.” He remembered giving up, exasperated, remembered thinking it would probably do him good to get away and clear his head for a few days. “He convinced _me_ to let it happen.”

The little cute version of him that Blue had programmed as autopilot popped up and gave him a big thumb’s up, and the Bluebird’s engines began to hum.

Zero spun, slamming his fist into the wall hard enough to crack the wood panelling, then just stood, breathing, his excitement at the discovery replaced with a mixture of rage and helplessness that rose in his throat like bile. The _idiot._ How dare he do this on _purpose._ How dare he make a fool of Zero like this, how dare he put himself in this danger—

“He won’t thank you for that,” Synox said, indicating the damage to the wall, “when we get him back.”

Zero didn’t answer, stalking out of the room.

He wandered aimlessly for a while. He passed the rec room, where Sy’s squad was taking its regulated ice-cream-optional afternoon break. He lingered by the doors of Blue’s suite for a moment but that seemed needlessly morose, even for the state he was in now. Eventually he ended up in the dojo.

The lights were dimmed, and he felt no need to raise them. He stripped off his vest and sword-belt, placing his weapons in the racks at the edges of the room, and then stood, eyes-closed, centering himself on the balls of his feet. He had a lot of information to sort through, and a hell of a lot of emotion.

Blue had known he was going to be kidnapped, but had known whoever was planning on doing so wasn’t good enough to get past Zero, so he’d manufactured Zero’s absence. He’d known he was going to get kidnapped and he let it happen. That meant two things: one, he was reasonably certain of his own survival. Blue was occasionally reckless—Zero distinctly remembered that time he’d thrown himself damn near into the void of space to grab Synox—but he wasn’t suicidal.

Zero stepped forward, throwing his fist forward and locking his elbow in the first form of a Gank combat drill.

Two, there was something to be gained from allowing the kidnapping to take place. By being captured, Blue was able to gather some kind of information, or force some kind of action from someone. This stupid machine had all the forethought that the youngest-ever Minister of Propaganda could put into it— _something_ was going to fall into his lap at the end, Zero was certain of it.

He snapped up his knee and angled his torso back in the second form, arms close to his chest. A machine. And Zero was part of it, part of this mousetrap Blue had set with himself as the bait. He was supposed to find the hologram. Hell - Blue had probably set the hologram up himself _for_ Zero to find, to do exactly as he had done—discover the act, dismiss the idiots who were fooled by it, look up the patent and find his coordinates. Very neat and tidy way to make sure only he knew what had happened, and no alarms would be set off for anyone else. He imagined Blue laughing to himself, taking bets on how long it would take before he was rescued.

He wobbled on his heel. He hated it when Blue used him like this, just a domino, just a spark to complete a circuit, just another line of code to make equations sing. He knew that’s what people were, to Blue; you didn’t get to _be_ Minister of Propaganda without understanding that people were as easy to program—and slice—as droids. But. Some days Zero could convince himself he was an exception.

He jumped to his other heel to swap into the next stance, fumbled it, and cursed, catching himself clumsily on both feet.

“You’re really all tangled up about this, huh.”

Zero opened his eyes to glare at Aava, realized she couldn’t see his face, and then gave up on figuring out what emoji would best convey his feelings right now. He sat down, legs loosely crossed, gesturing for her to join him.

She did so, silently, and Zero took his time to, well, zero in on the root—one of the many—of his anger. Finally, tightly: “I don’t like when people mess with what’s mine.”

Aava raised a slow, knowing eyebrow.

“Oh, shut up,” Zero snapped. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” she acknowledged. “Do you?"

Zero shifted, defensive. “My job is to keep him safe,” he said firmly. “I—I take that seriously.”

“That’s what’s got you so anxious you look like you’d shatter into pieces if anyone looked at you wrong?” Aava asked, arch. “Not being sure you’ll get your next paycheck?”

Zero said nothing, flicking up a :/ on his visor.

Aava sighed. “You’ve worked other bodyguard gigs.”

“Sure,” said Zero, because he had, though it had been nearly ten years.

“Ever lose a client?”

Zero thought about it. “Once,” he said. “Old guy. Running spice. I was seventeen. We were under heavy blaster fire, some punk got in a lucky shot under my arm.” He remembered being disappointed in himself, and determined to do damage control on his rep. He remembered none of this—overwhelming, hideous dread, none of this gnawing guilt _,_ none of this rage.

Aava stayed silent, just watching him.

“It’s—different,” Zero said finally. “Blue and I—we’re closer in age, we’ve worked together longer, he relies on me for a lot of stuff. We’re friends. We’re _friends,_ of course I’m worried.” Every assertion rang more false than the last.

“We’re friends,” Aava pointed out.

“Yeah, and I’d be worried if you got abducted, too.” He stopped, and thought about that. “For the abductors, mostly.”

Aava inclined her head at the compliment. “You’re missing the point, though.”

Zero sighed and flopped backward, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. “Not missing,” he said finally, because he wasn’t. He knew what she was getting at, and he knew—to some degree—that she was right. His protectiveness of Blue extended far past anything that could be considered professional concern, and uncomfortably far into a kind of deep, frustrated possessiveness that he’d been feeling on and off for. Shit, probably _years_ . “Avoiding. Continuously, but _especially_ right now.” He thought he would feel less tense, dropping his pretenses, but he just felt—unmoored.

Aava hummed. “That makes more sense. I thought you were being uncharacteristically stupid.”

Zero shook his head. “I know what this is,” he said, though he hadn’t, quite, until pushed to. Like _Blue’s been kidnapped,_ it hadn’t been quite real until he’d had to confirm it to someone else.  He swallowed, thinking about the hologram again, beautiful and eerily still on the hotel bed. “I just. I also know it doesn’t matter.”

He couldn't see Aava’s face from where he was lying, and her voice was neutral when she asked, “Why not?”

Zero grimaced, but before he could answer his comm bleeped, and Synox said, “We’re beginning our approach, if you would like to take the helm.”

+

It was a goddamn warehouse planet. Zero’s frustrations grew as they fought their way through frankly embarrassing numbers of frankly embarrassingly janky guard droids, and Synox got to exercise his rookies a little with some easy target practice on hired muscle. No wonder Blue wasn’t worried about these people. He could probably take down some of them _himself._

They found Blue in the central warehouse. He was kneeling, a single guy at his side with a blaster trained on his head. His hands were bound. He raised his chin when they entered; Zero did a cursory scan of his face and then, with an effort, continued surveying the room.

In front of Blue was a tall human man in a robe. Zero squinted at him, doing a quick facial recognition through ISB files of smugglers, resistance fighters, and bounty hunters until he came up with an answer: small-time weapons dealer K’Nigh Coreel. Zero had never even _heard_ of him.

“Ahh,” said Coreel, his voice dripping with drama. “So. We have our first contenders. I’m impressed you made it this far.”

Zero stared at him. “Blue,” he called, “what the kriff is he talking about.”

“Well,” Blue called back, “he probably assumes the ransom message he attempted to broadcast to the whole galaxy a while ago actually sent, and you guys are the first of what he thinks will be many people trying to make their names by paying him an honestly insultingly small amount of credits for my return.”

“I won’t hear any more of your _lies,_ Minister!” The weapons dealer snapped, waving a langorous, be-ringed hand at Blue as if that could ever shut him up. “Clearly that’s who they are.”

“Vape me running,” Aava murmured to Zero. “You were right. He pulled a Leenik.”

“A what?” asked Synox. “Your rebel friend whose arm Zero cut off?”

Aava waved a hand. “It’s something Tryst says every time he lets me capture him so we can hook up.”

That made Zero’s neck snap around. “You’re saying Blue got captured so he could have _sex_ with this guy?”

“No, no, don’t worry,” Aava reassured him. “The sex part makes it a Tryst, the Leenik part is the getting captured.”

“Well?” demanded whatever the hell this guy said his name was. Behind him, Zero could see Blue kriffing _smiling._ “Your answer?”

“The sex part does actually make it a tryst,” Synox noted under his breath. “Oh my god, _that’s why he calls himself that._ ”

Aava nodded. “He’s dreadfully unsubtle.” Her voice, if Zero didn’t know better, would almost sound fond.

Zero stepped forward. “Minister Blue,” he said, because there was no way in hell Blue wasn’t filming this, and he hated when Zero got familiar on camera. “Permission to end this charade?”

Blue’s eyes glittered. “Permission granted, Agent Zero.”

Usually, Zero would go through the whole routine of hauling the guy up, putting his vibro-sword to his throat, let Blue do the speech, and probably end up letting the dude go, scared straight and added to Blue’s arsenal of useful fools. But he’d pulled up his quick scan of Blue’s face,  and he’d seen his split eyebrow, the purpling around one brilliant eye.

Zero stepped forward, drew his sword, slit the man’s throat, and re-sheathed it again in one fluid, unbroken motion.

Blue flinched. He always did, when there was excessive blood. The mook holding him at blasterpoint gaped, just for a split second, and Aava Force-threw him into the wall like a ragdoll. Zero ignored him, stepping over the body and crossing to Blue. The lockpicks built into his fingers made quick work of the binders.

“Thanks, Zero,” said Blue softly. “Beautiful work by the way. Very cinematic.”

Zero finally let himself look properly at his face. “What the _hell_ ,” he said, “is wrong with you?” He’d never been more glad for the opacity of his helmet, because he had no idea what his face was doing right now, what Blue might get from it.

Blue blinked at him. “What?”

Zero dropped the binders to the floor, knowing he was uncomfortably close but not caring. He took another step forward, forcing Blue to step backward, still massaging his wrists. “Zero,” Blue said, perplexed, “buddy, what’s—”

Zero planted a palm in the center of his chest, still walking him backward. “You will never,” he said, “ _ever_ pull a stunt like this on me again. I don’t care if you think it’s _cinematic,_ I don’t care if you have a once in a lifetime opportunity to expose a rebel sect, I don’t care if you think it’s vital to the health of the _kriffing_ Emperor. Never.”

Blue’s back hit the wall, and he licked his lips. He was flushing, whether out of anger at Zero for telling him what to do or embarrassment that he was doing it in front of the others Zero didn’t know. “But—”

“I thought you were _dead!”_ Zero snapped. “When I found your stupid hologram and you wouldn’t wake up I thought—” he cut himself off. “I thought I failed you.”

Something in Blue’s face softened, and Zero had a sudden, horrible feeling of vulnerability, of being seen. “Zero,” Blue breathed, his hands coming up to cup Zero’s helmet. “Oni. Hey.”

Zero wrapped his real hand around one of Blue’s wrists but didn’t tug it away from his jaw. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded, quieter now, but no less heated. They were so close _,_ Blue’s chest almost pressed to his, but he couldn’t bring himself to step back. Not yet. “I could have been in on this plan and everything would have been _fine,_ but no, you had to set up the whole bullshit with the useless vapeheads on your hotel door, and goddamn secret messages hidden in _patent numbers._ What if I’d gotten something wrong?”

“You didn’t,” Blue said, his shoulders lifting in a shrug.  “You wouldn’t.”

Zero tightened his grip, hard, snarling. _“Blue.”_

Blue’s eyes widened, just a fraction, his breath hitching, and Zero could feel his pulse racing in his wrist where his fingers were holding it tight, too tight, painfully tight. His wrists were so _thin._

Zero let go of him and stepped back, shot through with a self-hatred so intense it rocked him back on his heels. Blue swayed at the sudden loss of his proximity, and Zero looked away from him at the others. Aava was kneeling by the goon, who looked like he’d had his neck efficiently snapped. Synox was directing storm troopers to collect the cameras hidden around the room. Zero got his attention and pointed out the one above the door frame with a blinking arrow on his visor.

“Think you got enough angles, boss?” he shot at Blue, not looking at him.

Blue sighed, and Zero could almost _hear_ him drop out of whatever—weird intimate scared place they’d just been and into the smooth public persona of Minister Blue. Almost. There was something off, jittering, in his tone. “I think we’ll have something presentable,” he said.“We’ll have to cut out whatever muttering you guys were doing in the middle there—”

“I accidentally suggested to Zero that you and K’nigh Coreel were having sex,” Aava said casually. Zero could have killed her—well, he could have tried.

“What,” said Blue.

“And I discovered why one infuriating rebel smuggler calls himself Trystan Valentine,” Synox added helpfully.

“I believe it’s actually his given name,” Aava said, straightening up and rejoining them.

 _“What,”_ said Blue.

Synox shuddered. “Awful. Almost makes me feel sorry for the boy.”

Aava chuckled darkly. “Don’t. Trust me.”

“Hello?” said Blue, waving a hand. “Don’t I get a welcome back, good job on the plan, anything?”

Aava crossed her arms. “Zero covered it pretty well. This was a stupid idea, never do anything else like it ever again, we’re glad you’re not dead.”

“Agreed,” said Synox shortly.

“Oh,” said Blue, sounding put out. “Great. Next question, and this is of absolute, _utmost_ importance. Did any of you bring me any caf?”

Suddenly the jittering in his voice made sense, and so did the circles under his eyes. Zero did some quick math—if he'd really been taken the night before he’d been caf-less for nearly 16 hours. He was honestly a little surprised he wasn’t curled up in the fetal position.

“There’s caf on the ship,” Aava said when it became clear none of them had. She glanced at Zero, then crossed to Blue, placing a guiding hand at the small of his back. “C’mon, let’s get you inside.”

Synox rounded up his men and marched them back through the warren of warehouses at double-time, Aava and Blue after them, out of step but just as rapid. Zero took a last look at the body, at the warehouse, feeling crazy, split, both light-headed with relief and impossibly heavy with bitterness, and finally followed.

+

Blue was already on his third cup of caf by the time Zero joined him, Synox, and Aava in the briefing room. He seemed better—mostly because he was talking, at about five words per second. “I swear, if I hadn’t doctored the codes before we left they never would have made it off the _planet_. I would’ve been brought back by some randoms in buckets and you would have found out about it on the 6 o’clock newscast.”

“Who were these douchebags?” Zero asked. He managed to push through his shit for now and adopt a pretty normal tone, leaning on the bar next to Aava. “Why’d they want you?”

Blue looked at him sideways. “Would it surprise you to hear that K’nigh Coreel was the leader of a ring of ne’er-do-wells hell-bent on disgracing me?”

Zero snorted, flashing him an eyeroll emoji. “I’d be surprised if you told me that guy was the leader of his own ass.”

Blue smiled at him. “Then you, dear Zero, are more discerning than several hundred denizens of the seedy underbelly of the holonet.” He cracked his knuckles and opened his palms like he was going to start typing, then paused. “Oh. Can I have my gloves back?”

Zero sighed and flipped open the left breast pocket of his vest, handing him his gloves and ignoring Aava’s gaze.

“Thanks,” said Blue absently, pulling them on. “Now. Look.” He spread his fingers like a close-up magician doing a card spread and brought up about a sabak-deck’s worth of holonet underworld pages—blog posts, news articles, forum posts, stretching back years, all from a variety of people, all crediting K’nigh Coreel for various, increasingly impressive crimes, heists, and weapons deals. Blue twitched his long fingers and one site - a forum post on what looked like a trading post for black market tech - pulled out of the spread.

“Two weeks ago,” Blue said, “I came across this lovely bit of writing.”

Zero scanned it. It was different from the others, not mentioning K’nigh Coreel at all, but instead focusing on Blue - not by name, but it’s not like there were many other “upstart Imperial Ministers” with a “vendetta against legitimate businessmen.”

“You have a handful of guys executed for stealing from your warehouses and all of a sudden you’ve got a _vendetta,_ ” Blue muttered.

“Coreel wrote this?” Synox asked.

Blue shook his head and quirked his fingers, and the forum post was replaced by a face—a Devaronian face, scarred, with huge, curling horns. Zero flashed a double exclamation point. “Is that Rovun Dak?”

Blue hummed approvingly. “You know your weapons dealers.”

“Rovun Dak is also a serial murderer,” Aava said, looking much more interested than she had a moment before. “How is he mixed up in all this?”

“Mr. Dak has had multiple schemes ruined by my increased security, and by my superior technology flooding markets he once had a monopoly on,” Blue said casually, as if he were talking about stock options, not the many ways he’d pissed off an intergalactic homicidal maniac. “Aava’s right about him. However, Dak exists in the sort of…fuzzy border between ‘legal’ and ‘worth the effort’. So long as he’s only killing other criminals, nothing that really gets the Empire’s attention, we don’t really care.”

“He comes after you,” said Zero, trying not to give it a weight that meant anything, “we care.”

Blue smiled thinly, eyes unreadable behind his glasses.

Synox leaned back in his chair. “I’m still not clear on what this has to do with Coreel, or with the reckless behavior you’ve displayed.”

Blue rolled his eyes, and the card-fan of blog posts spread outward again. “I’m getting there, Sy. Look. Dak needed some way to get at me, but he couldn’t do it himself. So, I gave him someone who could.”

Zero flicked his eyes through the series of posts. They were all from different writers, but there were little, subtle tells, things that someone only someone very familiar with one Adnau Wrengen’s writing style would be able to catch. “You wrote these,” he said. “All of them?”

Blue nodded. “I made Coreel,” he said, casually, like he was describing cooking breakfast. “I built him up from a two-bit nothing into one of the most enterprising new names in the underworld, backdating my evidence of course, and then I made some introductions.” The blog posts vanished and were replaced by emails, again from a number of people, to Dak or Coreel or both, setting up the kidnapping. “Dak was pretty set at first on Coreel just killing me, but I persuaded him it would hurt me more—and cause less trouble with the rest of the Empire—if instead they beat me at my own game.” He smirked, impossibly pleased with himself. “You maybe wondered how I set up those cameras to capture Zero’s beautiful work back there.”

Aav raised her eyebrows. “You didn’t. They did.”

Blue inclined his head. “Coreel—who, by the way, was an idiot with the world’s biggest and most misplaced ego—took me to his warehouse, carefully staged, and sent a holonet blast that he believed would bring wave upon wave of would-be heroes down upon him. He would take their ransom money, kill them anyway, and then do the same for the next folks, and the next, until someone came along that might actually prove a threat, at which point he would give me up, sitting pretty on three or four times the amount he asked for me, plus a beautifully-filmed anti-propaganda piece of my humiliation. This, he would give to Dak, who would distribute it through the underworld to stir his crews to higher fervor and counteract the rather quelling effect I have had on his business lately.” He paused, thinking. “Likely he would just send it out to general distribution, actually, see if he could get me fired as a bonus.”

Synox’s eyes narrowed. “But instead…”

“But! Instead!” Blue bit off each word with vicious satisfaction. “Instead he, and those same underworld contacts, will receive video evidence of K’nigh Coreel, so far as they understand him a criminal star of the highest caliber, being neatly beheaded by one Agent Zero for daring to make an attempt on my life. You know, once I’ve edited it and sent it to them.” He sat back, spreading his hands, all of the holopages above the caf bar fading. “Am I good or am I _good?_ ”

Synox stared at him for a long time. “You were in repeated secret contact with a serial murderer who wants to kill you?”

“Yeah, I’m with Synox on this one,” Aava said. “You’re saying Dak knew about the whole thing, he could have been there waiting to kill you when Coreel arrived?”

Blue waved a hand. “I’m not an idiot, I gave him the wrong coordinates for the kidnapping.”

“But Coreel had the right ones,” said Aava slowly. “So at _literally any time,_ if they’d had contact that you didn’t monitor—”

“They didn’t,” protested Blue. “I don’t get it, guys, this went really well! I basically just neutralized a whole faction of people who want me dead, they’re scared to death of us now—Zero, I did good, right?” He turned to face Zero, his face pleading. “I mean, it’s your job to keep me safe, and I’m like four times safer than I was a few weeks ago. I basically just helped you do your job!”

Zero realized his mouth was hanging open behind his visor, and he closed it with a snap that hurt his jaw. “You,” he started, and then stopped, all of the weight of his crazy split feeling from the warehouse overwhelming him again. “You know what?” he said, finally, hearing his voice come out a little high and odd. “You’re right. You did good, Blue.”

Blue turned back to the others, and Zero stood up, making his way as casually as possible toward the door. Behind him he heard Blue go, “See? Zero thinks I’m cool.”

He could hear the frown in Synox’s voice: “ _Zero_ broke your wood panelling by the cockpit.”

Zero ducked through the door and locked it behind him.

+

_9.31 pm_

_Minister_blu3: zero_

_Minister_blu3: zero_

_Minister_blu3: zero c’mon i’m not even mad anymore let me in_

 

_10:19 pm_

_Minister_blu3: zero open the door_

_Minister_blu3: i got through the other one and i’ll get through yours too, this is my ship_

_Minister_blu3: i’m starting to think you didn’t mean it when you said i did good_

_Minister_blu3: i don’t know why you’re still mad at me, i explained that i was helping_

 

_10:45 pm_

_Minister_blu3: i hate this._

_Minister_blu3: this is stupid. and borderline insubordination._

 

_11:52 pm_

_DJ_0: i’m not synox, the i word doesn’t work on me._

_Minister_blu3: but you answered so it did something!!_

 

_11:54 pm_

_Minister_blu3: I should never have let you install privacy locks._

 

_11:55 pm_

_Minister_blu3: are you really going to make me slice your personal codes so I can come in and talk to my best friend after an extremely harrowing day?_

_Minister_blu3: i got punched in the face today! it hurt!_

Zero opened the door. “Who punched you?”

Blue stared at him, hands still raised like he was in the middle of typing something. “Oh,” he said. “Hi. What?”

Zero wandered away, back into his room, leaving the door open for Blue to follow, if he wanted. “Who punched you?” he asked again. He picked up his glass of pulkay off his side-table and slid his straw up under his visor again. It took a lot for him to get drunk. Luckily, he’d been drinking for a while.

“I, uh, don’t know his name,” said Blue, like he somehow should have. “The one who was holding me up at blasterpoint.” Zero could see him without turning around, a flare of heat in his thermals. The door slid closed behind him.

“Oh, the one Aav’ killed,” said Zero. “Good.”

“Why?” asked Blue, sounding genuinely curious.

Zero shrugged slightly. “Wanted to make sure he hadn’t gotten out alive.”

Blue was silent for a moment, and when Zero turned to look at him he was examining the room around him with apparent interest. Zero realized he hadn’t really been in here, much; they always met in the briefing room or the solarium or Blue’s own quarters. Zero, for good reason, kept this space his. And now here Blue was, in his space, bruised and brilliant and absolutely unaware of the internal havoc he caused Zero just by being alive.

Alive. His eyes caught on Blue’s profile, the curve of his cheekbone, his nose, his throat, the rise and fall of his chest. Unconsciously, Zero matched his breathing with his own. It was slower than was natural for him, making him feel—meditative, time-displaced, and he was startled when Blue finally turned to him and said, “I didn’t think you’d let me do it.”

“What?” asked Zero.

Blue gestured to the bottle of pulkay. “May I?”

Zero waved him on. Blue was a lightweight, and this shit was strong, but hell, what was one more bad decision in a line of bad decisions? He sank down on the seat underneath the window, his own drink at his knee, his hands loose, watching Blue pour a drink.

“I didn’t think you’d let me do it,” Blue said again, “so I didn’t tell you about it. The whole thing, the whole plan.” He raised his drink to his mouth, looking disarmingly earnest. “That’s why you’re mad at me, right?”

Zero almost said _I’m not mad at you,_ but it wouldn’t precisely have been true. “I probably wouldn’t have,” he said honestly. “So good job there.”

Blue sipped his drink and grimaced. “I wish you wouldn’t tell me I did good when you don’t mean it.”

Zero snorted, leaning back on his hands and crossing his legs at the ankle. “No you don’t.”

Blue sighed lightly. “No,” he said. “I don’t.” He crossed to Zero, and for a moment just—looked down at him where he reclined. Neither of them said anything, and Blue’s face was complicated, as if hovering on the edge of decision or speech.

Zero felt like he should move, position himself some other way, something less. Open. But before he could shift Blue was taking another (larger) sip of his drink and settling into the window-seat at his side.

“I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “I understand now that there were risk factors I didn’t consider and this wasn’t as strategically sound a plan as I thought, and I’m sorry for keeping secrets from you and putting myself unnecessarily in harm’s way.”

Zero turned slowly to look at him. He’d swapped back into earnest again, his brows drawn together over his glasses, and Zero lasted about .06 seconds before he burst out laughing, flicking up a little laughing face on his visor out of long habit.

“How many times did you rehearse that?” he asked when he’d calmed down. “Kriffing hell, some of it was so Synox I could almost hear his accent.”

Blue made a face at him. “Yes, okay, they had to talk me through it,” he said. “No need to laugh _quite_ so much, thank you.”

“Sorry,” Zero said, meaning it, and then, wickedly: “See how easy that was?”

Blue _tsked_ at him, turning away to look at the stars through Zero’s window. They just sat for a while, close, silent, drinking.

“It was also,” Blue said at last, “kind of a test.”

Zero stared at him, a touch of his earlier fury rising. “A test. You gambled your _life_ on a test, of, of what, my _loyalty—”_

“Don't be absurd,” Blue said, turning back to face him. “Your loyalty was never in question, and neither was my life. Obviously you were going to come for me.” His lips quirked, and it—it was like Zero’d taken his helmet off a second time for Aava, today in the dojo, only showing her had also showed himself, because he swore he used to be able to handle just _looking_ at Blue but the fondness and pride in that small smile made his heart turn kriffing molten. “You beat my estimate by almost an hour though.”

It took Zero a minute to realize that he needed to say something in order to continue, like, conversing, and not just staring. He checked his visor to make sure he hadn’t done something stupid like let his heart flash up, pixelated and unthinking, and then he said, “so what were you testing?”

Blue shook his head, burying himself in his drink, like he regretted bringing it up. His cheeks were pink, and it pulled Zero dangerously, drunkenly back to the warehouse, to flushed cheeks and wide eyes for a different reason. He swallowed hard. “I scared you today,” he said, before he could stop himself.

Blue looked at him sharply, lowering the glass. It was nearly empty. “You what?”

Zero worked his tongue around in his mouth. “I scared you. In the warehouse, when I was yelling at you.” He reached out, touching one metal fingertip to Blue’s wrist. “I felt it.”

Blue stared at him for a second, and then let out a sound like a cross between a laugh and a sigh. “Zero,” he said, “I wasn’t _scared._ ”

Zero blinked, popping up a ?

“You,” said Blue, a slight slur to his voice, “you show up after I haven’t seen you for a week, absolutely flawlessly complete my very clever master plan with absolutely no instruction, kill a man for me _on camera_ in what was an objectively gorgeous way, back me up against a wall, and then say my name in some kind of sexy growl and you think my pulse was racing out of _fear?_ ” He caught himself, as if realizing he was speaking aloud, and frowned suddenly at the liquor in his hand. “Mnh. Kriff. Pretend I didn’t say that.”

Zero said nothing, couldn’t even really figure out how to move. He was pretty sure his visor was just blinking a > command line from pure shock.

Blue didn’t look at him, running a hand through his hair, messing up his curls, his teeth catching his lip nervously. “Anyway,” he said, “uh, I really just came to apologize, not get sloppy drunk all over your floor, or whatever, so I should go—”

He made a move to stand up, but Zero was faster, his ability to move now binary, switching from zero to one, from _can’t_ to _must._ He felt—energized, electrified, disbelieving; he caught Blue’s wrist and pulled him back down, effortless. “Stay.”

Blue finally looked at him, wide-eyed, sinking back down into the seat. “Right,” he said, “I, yes, ok.”

Zero kept holding his wrist, looking down at it, running his thumb over it slow. He could feel Blue’s pulse again, racing, racing in reaction to him. Racing with _want._

He heard Blue swallow hard. “Zero,” he said, tentative, “buddy, you’re sometimes real hard to read, did you know that?”

Zero cocked his head at him, shifting closer on the window-seat, letting his voice go rough. “Am I?” he murmured. He raised a hand to trace his knuckles up Blue’s jaw. “Do you know why I was so angry to discover you were gone?”

Blue licked his lips, leaning slightly into Zero’s touch, waiting.

“Because you’re _mine_ ,” Zero said, low and drunk and utterly honest, shifting his fingers feather-light up to the bruise around his eye, “and no one gets to touch what’s mine.”

Blue actually _shivered,_ his eyelids fluttering, and Zero took the opportunity to steal his glasses and slip his hand over his eyes, making sure no light could filter through. He felt Blue’s eyebrows contract against his palm, in surprise, or puzzlement, but he was too busy pulling up his helmet with his other hand. He took a second to blink at the sudden change in exposure, at the air on his skin, just enough time for Blue to get impatient. “Ze—”

Zero leaned in and cut him off with his mouth.

The end of his name just became a sort of moaned _oh_ against him and then Blue was kissing him back enthusiastically, running his tongue over Zero’s canines, mapping him out as if he might be able to extrapolate the rest of his face just from the shape of his mouth. It should have been a bad kiss. It had all the hallmarks of a bad kiss—Blue had kissed maybe one other person in his whole _life,_ he was drunk, he used too much tongue—but his mouth was so soft and so warm and he kept making these little needy noises that set Zero on _fire._

Blue’s hands came up to try and touch Zero’s face but he caught both of his wrists in the hand not still clamped over Blue’s eyes, holding them firm. Blue whined at him, and it took every ounce of self-control Zero had not to push him back onto the window-seat and just _take_ him.

He pulled back instead, letting go of Blue’s wrists but making sure his helmet was settled fully back down before he pulled the hand away from his eyes. It took him a moment for his visor to fully adjust, and when his vision cleared Blue was staring at him, eyes dark and mouth slick and absolutely _betrayed._ “That’s not kriffing _fair—_ ”

Privately Zero agreed, but aloud he said, “go on, then. You only came to apologize, right?”

Blue glared at him. “You expect me to just _leave_ after that—”

“Blue,” said Zero, letting some of his growl into his voice again, and Blue went gratifyingly, gorgeously still. Oh, this was going to be _fun_.

Assuming that Blue wanted it to be, in the sober light of day. Zero felt suddenly exhausted.“Go to bed.”

Blue stood up, swaying slightly. “Fine,” he said. “But. Zero. I want—”

Zero flashed him a stop-sign. “See if you still want it in the morning,” he said, “and then we’ll talk.”

Blue deflated, running a hand over the back of his neck and lowering his head in something like a nod. Then, suddenly, he was grasping at Zero’s neck. Zero fought down his immediate instinct to judo-flip him through the transparisteel window behind him and his worry that he was trying to pull off his helmet both and was rewarded for his faith by Blue just. Pulling him in, pressing his forehead to Zero’s visor hard. Zero’s nerve sensors passed information to his actual skin, so he could feel the puff of Blue’s breath over his mouth and jaw when he said, “Thank you.”

He was gone before Zero could do more than swallow against the sudden and inexplicable rise of his heart into his mouth.

+

He woke up with a pounding headache, swiftly fading dreams of a warm, eager mouth, and 15 new messages from Blue. Six were just his name. The next nine brought the memories of the night before crashing back with incandescent clarity.

_6:35 am_

Minister_Blu3: zero I still want it  
_Minister_Blu3: you told me to let you know in the morning so. I'm letting you know  
_ Minister_Blu3: zero please wake up

_7:13 am_

_Minister_Blu3: when did you learn to sleep through my morning announcements_

_7:35 am_

Minister_Blu3: I can't stop thinking about your mouth  
Minister_Blu3: yesterday I wasn’t even certain you had a mouth and now it's all I can think about  
Minister_Blu3: why didn’t you tell me you had FANGS

_8:17 am_

_Minister_Blu3: oh god are you awake and ignoring these  
_ _Minister_Blu3: zero_

Zero closed his eyes, taking a breath.

 _8:29 am  
_ _DJ_0: good morning, blue_

He closed the chat box in his HUD, stretched, and pushed himself to his feet.

Aava was sitting at the caf bar, a mug at her elbow, reading something on a pad. She looked up when Zero came in. “Rough night?”

Zero settled in beside her, carefully, wincing. “How can you even tell?”

She twitched her fingers at him. “Force-witch,” she reminded him. “Plus, Blue was just in here looking like someone ran over him in a speeder, and he tends not to drink alone.”

Zero nodded at her point, pouring himself a cup of caf and muttering a curse when he realized he'd left his straw in his rooms. Probably still stuck in half-full glass of pulkay. “What are you reading?”

Aava picked up the pad, scrolling through it. “The new Nemoidian Sparks novel, came out last month,” she said. “Did you know Blue gets them delivered as soon as they’re published?”

“The guy’s a skilled rebel propagandist,” Blue said, walking in. “I keep tabs on my competition.”

He very carefully didn’t look at Zero, making a beeline for the caf machine.

“This one’s cute, it’s dedicated to Leenik,” Aava said. “Have you read it?”

Blue didn’t answer, and after a second Zero realized she was talking to him. He flashed her pixelated unimpressed eyes. “Why would I read a romance novel?”

“It’s interesting,” she said, voice studiously casual. “It's about a guy who gets himself kidnapped so his love interest will realize she cares about him and try to get him back.”

Zero turned, very slowly, to Blue. “Is it,” he said.

Blue had the holonet up, shading his glasses so he couldn’t see his eyes, but the tips of his ears were pink. “I wouldn’t know,” he said, “haven’t had a chance to read it.”

Zero popped open their chat in his HUD again.

DJ_0: a test, huh  
DJ_0: this is what you meant?  
_Minister_Blu3: I said I haven't read it!  
_ DJ_0: don't lie to me

He could see Blue start typing, across the bar, and then stop, catching his lip between his teeth, and then start again.

_Minister_Blu3: what are you gonna do to me if I do?_

Zero smirked behind his visor.

_DJ_0: you wanna find out?_

Blue snapped the holonet closed immediately. “Zero,” he said, his voice coming out honestly impressively steady. “I finished the editing on the video of you killing Coreel, you want to come take a look?”

Zero stood up. “Sure, boss.” He picked up the cup of caf - he might not be able to drink it, but Blue was going to want it eventually, and he didn’t really intend to let him leave his rooms any time soon.

Aava didn’t look up from her book, but he could see her smirking in his peripherals. “Have fun.”

Zero gave her a giant cartoon finger and followed Blue out.

  



End file.
